NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

 Last week was a crazy hot week and the weather was not compliant to allow for multiple tick drags. I was able to go to two sites close by to me in Richmond, VA, Deep Run Park and James River Park- Pony Pasture. I decided to stay closer to home since the heat index was about 110 degrees that day just in case it got too hot. The first site, Deep Run Park, I was only able to get two American Dog Ticks and the second site, James River Park- Pony Pasture, I was not able to collect any ticks anywhere that was even moderately accessible to access with my tick drag. I do not know if it was a manner of being to hot for ticks to come out and grab the tick drag or if both sites have sprayed for ticks. I would not be surprised if the sites, especially James River Park has sprayed for ticks with all of the recreation going on in the park. Apparently last year a previous crew did a tick drag in James River Park- Pony Pasture they collected no ticks either, in completely different weather condit...

  This Monday we set up all our traps like normal but then drove to a new area to look at another potential site. On Tuesday, we collected from the light traps and resting boxes and sorted through everything. This was a big accomplishment for us since we have never finished sorting that fast. On Wednesday, we collected from resting boxes again and sorted quickly through those and discussed purchasing materials for making more resting boxes. The reason we want more resting boxes is because we have only caught blood fed culiseta in that type of trap so far. Thursday and Friday we sent assembling the resting boxes and the professor I work with had to drive the pooled mosquitoes down to the lab for testing. One problem we have had this week is figuring out how to ship our pools to the lab. No shipping company in the area will take the pools because they must be shipped with dry ice. So far, we have had to drive the pools down twice, but we will not be able to do this anymore and we are...

It has been a very productive and interesting past two weeks at Suffolk County Vector Control. Our mosquito surveillance has continued, which has taken the team of interns and I to a wide variety of marsh sites across Suffolk County. I definitely think I'm becoming more efficient with my time out on the marsh. Specifically, I am focusing on conducting more thorough searches of the designated areas, being mindful of potential pooled holes in obscure locations on the terrain. I'm also finding it easier to actually observe the water sample after dipping and locate the mosquito larvae. This past Monday and Tuesday were of particular note, just because of how hot it was. On Monday the 23rd, it was roughly 90 °F throughout the entire day, and Tuesday the 24th was just under 10 0 °F. We were only out on Tuesday for about an hour due to the heat, but we spent the entire day out on Fire Island on Monday. I've been biking there before in previous summers, so it was really cool to exp...

 This week has been one of the hottest so far! From Monday through Wednesday, the temperature in Delaware soared past 100°F, which is very unusual for this area. Because of the extreme heat, we focused on completing fieldwork in the early mornings and shifted to indoor tasks in the afternoons whenever possible. It was definitely a sweaty and exhausting week, and staying hydrated became one of our top priorities. On Monday , we began preparing for two important certification exams provided by the Delaware Department of Agriculture (DDA): 1. The Pesticide Applicator Core Exam, which covers the general knowledge needed to safely use pesticides. 2. The Category 5C Mosquito Control Exam, which focuses specifically on mosquito pest management. We studied using training materials, textbooks, and also got great advice from our experienced colleagues who had taken the tests before. While preparing, we learned a lot about different mosquito species and the various strategies used to manage t...

  Learning to Use the Golden Eagle Fogger This week I got hands-on experience using the Golden Eagle thermal fogger, which sprays a product called Zenivex (Etofenprox). I had heard about adulticiding before, but seeing the process in action and helping to carry it out was something completely new for me. We used the fogger in some of the more heavily wooded and overgrown areas around the city, especially in spots that are harder to reach and don’t get much regular upkeep. These are prime areas for adult mosquitoes to hide during the day, especially species that can transmit diseases like West Nile Virus. The goal was to target adult mosquitoes directly to help reduce their numbers in areas with high activity or trap counts. The city requires that we catch at least 200 adult mosquitos in a gravid trap to qualify the need for insecticide sprays.  Even though in the blog post photo I’m wearing an N95 mask and face shield, Zenivex is very safe to use. The protective gear is mostly...

  Week of June 24th – Mosquito Trapping in the Heat This week marked one of the hottest stretches of the summer so far, and it had a noticeable impact on our mosquito surveillance efforts. With temperatures soaring during the day and barely dropping at night, both the mosquito populations and our fieldwork routine were affected. Mosquito Trapping and the Heat Wave Normally, our traps yield a decent number of adult mosquitoes, but this week the counts were much lower than usual. We suspect the extreme heat is playing a major role, mosquitoes tend to be less active during high temperatures, and in some cases, they seek cooler, shaded areas that may be out of our trap range. It also didn’t help that we've had a stretch of dry weather with little to no rainfall. Because of this, most of the usual larval habitats such as standing bodies of water like puddles, ditches, and temporary containers have since dried up. When we went larval dipping at several known hot spots earlier this week, ...

 Last week I was able to finish tick drags in south central Virginia by rounding out my last site in Mecklenburg County and only site in Charlotte County. In my first site of the day, Occoneechee State Park, I was only able to collect 4 ticks which was odd because it seemed like a good area to get ticks. My second site of the day, Hogan Creek Wildlife Management Area, I was able to get 37 ticks which was more expected. Almost all the ticks collected that day were Lone Star Ticks. Occoneechee State Park was really nice, but big, I conducted drags in a variety of different sites to try to sample a larger part of the area and still minimal ticks.

 Week 6 of my internship is complete! We changed up our system a little bit this week to try and keep the specimens as fresh as possible. We caught for two nights instead of one and used only one light trap at each site. We also set out 3 resting boxes at each site for the first time! When we weren't out in the field we were sorting as quickly as possible so we could send out our first pools this week.  We sorted through 961 mosquitoes just from one trap this week! I think that was a record for us. We also caught 4 culiseta melanura for the first time since starting surveillance. We caught a few more species we had never seen before which was also very exciting. We sent out our 25 pools on Friday and hope to hear back on the results this week.  Next week we are moving all of the resting boxes to one site because we have only had success at one site, and we are going to start looking at sampling a new site where multiple horse deaths due to EEE have been reported.

 I finished this week excited and ready for the as says! Everyone here at the county has been so nice and helpful with any questions or concerns I have.  In weeks two and three, I mainly focused on continuing to identify mosquito larvae and adults from the Gravid and Light traps. With how many mosquitoes I have sorted and counted from the light traps, I think I have gone cross-eyed! I had the opportunity to discuss in more detail what I would be doing at the mosquito commission under my internship, including understanding how to obtain supplies and how to run the assays. In week four, I got the opportunity to shadow someone collecting possible Culex egg rafts and try to do some tick drags. One spot we had placed an IR Trap had so many mosquitoes, you could grab a handful in the air! Surprisingly, there were no egg rafts when we came to check on it 24 hours later. What a mystery!

       This week has been another exciting chapter full of learning, exploring, and sharpening new skills in entomology and environmental fieldwork.      On Monday, due to the rain, we couldn’t go out into the field for tick collection. Instead, we focused on tick identification in the lab. In the first half of the day, we examined ticks that had been collected earlier from roadkill animals. Sorting through the samples was challenging—many still had fur and hair attached, making it hard to isolate the ticks. For me, one of the trickiest parts was telling apart a blacklegged adult male tick from a well-fed lone star nymph. But once under the microscope, the differences became clearer, especially when looking closely at the legs and mouthparts. Pic.1 ticks preserved in ethanol: even with the naked eye, it is possible to see a Lone Star Tick adult female, an American dog tick adult female. Pic. 2, very nice shiny-looking Gulf Coast Tick, Adult Female unde...

          Hello! I'm Veronica, a rising junior at Vassar College, and I am currently a summer intern at the Garrett County Health Department in Maryland, focusing on tick surveillance and awareness efforts in the area. I recently finished my first week at the office, and I was really enthused by what I've done and learned so far.      The week started off slow, allowing me to get acquainted with the people working in the office and to familiarize myself with the purposes of my role here. By Wednesday, I was caught up in how the office processes the tick samples we collect and prepares them for shipment for other labs that are able to test them for various pathogens that can impact humans and pets. I spent much of my first couple of days identifying different species, genders, and life stages of ticks in the area, and slowly sorting them so they can be shipped out. So far, as expected, I. scapularis and D. variabilis samples have been col...

 Last week I finished up my 4th week of my internship with the Virginia Department of Health. I did two trips last week one on Wednesday and other on Thursday. My Wednesday trip was back down to Boydton, Virginia to hit two sites for tick dragging. First site was Eagle Point Wildlife Management Area and collected a good amount of ticks, 26 in total but all lonestar ticks and they were almost all nymphs. Second site was Greenwood Wildlife Management Area and collected almost no ticks oddly, both on the trail and deep in the woods off trail. My Thursday trip was to Cumberland Marsh Natural Area Preserve in New Kent, Va, beautiful area but the black flies and horseflies were abysmal basically hundreds of them nonstop swarming and attacking me on my walk over to the trail werevi was going to look for ticks. I collected 120 ticks on just the trail alone, almost entirely lonestar ticks of every life stage, only other species I got were blacklegged ticks but only collected 4, finding 120 ...

 This past week was my fifth week conducting mosquito surveillance. This week was a bit different than usual because my group had a training session in a different county. We set the traps out like normal on Monday and collected the mosquitoes on Tuesday. We tried to sort as much as possible before we had to leave for training on Wednesday. The training lasted two days and was very inciteful.  These instructors had much more experience with mosquitoes than all of my group and did a good job giving us better ways to capture and sort throughout a week.  On Wednesday, we practiced identifying mosquitoes, and the instructors gave us a key they made themselves from the use of multiple other keys. We have been using a key for all of North America and as you can imagine that is very broad and confusing. They also showed us some species that we have never identified before which was nice because we are more informed on what we could be seeing.  On Thursday, we talked about a...

Today concludes my first week interning at Suffolk County Vector Control. Due to poor weather, Monday and Tuesday were both spent in the lab. We received a tour of the facilities, met the entomologists on site, and discussed mosquito/tick control projects and site restorations. I enjoyed learning about the most common tick species on Long Island, which include deer ticks, American dog ticks, and lone star ticks. We spent most of the day on Tuesday looking at tick specimens under the microscope, practicing our identification skills. For the remainder of the week, we spent each morning at various field sites collecting and documenting mosquito larvae. During the afternoon, we put our mosquito larvae under the microscope and practiced using dichotomous keys to ID them. The field sites are beautiful, but I'm still getting used to walking with my hip boots in the marshes. The grasses and plants are thick, and the ground is pretty irregular with some unexpected patches of very soft mud t...

 Last week I finished my fourth week of my internship! Work has definitely started to pick up and we are running light traps once a week at two different sites. We also started to experiment with gravid traps but have not caught much in those yet. The gravid traps require a hay and water mixture to sit for a few days so it can get an odor that attracts the female mosquitoes to lay their eggs. More students have gotten involved with our specific project as well so I, along with another student, have been training these students how to identify the mosquitoes efficiently. We have not sent any pools to the lab for testing yet because we have not found the target species that we know of. Our main goal so far had been to get better at identifying and keeping the mosquitoes in good condition. The plan is to send our first pools next week.

 As my second week is coming to an end, I’ve learned a lot! During breaks, we spent time learning about DNREC’s organizational structure — how the different divisions are set up, what each one does, and how they all work together to protect Delaware’s natural resources. It’s fascinating to see how interconnected the work is and how every department plays a role in supporting the environment. On Tuesday, we focused on mosquito surveillance by setting light traps. These traps use CO₂ tanks, special lights, fans, and collection bags to attract mosquitoes overnight. The mosquitoes are drawn in by the carbon dioxide (which simulates human breath) and the warmth of the light, thinking it's a potential host. Once they get close, the fan sucks them into a collection cup where they are safely stored for later identification. The design is smart — the mosquitoes can breathe inside the cup through small holes until we collect them the next day. Wednesday was a bit different for me. While an...

 Last Tuesday, I took another trip to south central Virginia to Dick Cross Natural Area and Fort Barfoot Reservoir for more tick drags. Majority of the ticks collected Lonestar tick nymphs with 29 at Dick Cross and 43 at Fort Barfoot Reservoir. The bottom photo shows all the ticks collected at both sites in our ethanol tubes to show how many tiny nymphs decided to jump on my tick drag. The top photo is an adult male Gulf Coast tick uner the microscope I collected from Dick Cross. When I first collected it, I thought it was a adult male American Dog tick, but the mouth was different. It has a pretty decorative back that I thought looked really cool and it is not a common find in Virginia.

  I am incredibly honored and excited to be selected as an intern for the summer internship through the NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program with DNREC Fish and Wildlife Division. This amazing opportunity allows me to gain hands-on experience, work closely with professionals in the field, and contribute to important environmental work here in Delaware. The week of 6/2 was my first week, and it was full of new experiences and valuable lessons. On Monday, we went into the marshes to monitor mosquito larvae. We used a dipper to collect samples from different spots and carefully counted the larvae while identifying which stage of development they were in. We also kept track of any "hot spots" — areas that could become problematic breeding grounds and might need extra attention or even pesticide treatment. It was fascinating to learn how the position and appearance of larvae help us determine their growth stage.   (picture 1. My dip) On Tuesday, we shifted our focus to tick surveil...

 Hello! I've had a wonderful first week at this internship! For the first couple of days, I had the chance to shadow the collection of Gravid and Light traps in multiple areas of the county. The most tedious part is sorting out the many other insect specimens that get caught in the light traps. In addition to this, I started learning about identifying samples from Gravid traps and larvae samples. I'm getting ready to start this next week, using my knowledge of identification for more lab work! 

 My first few weeks of this internship started off at a slow pace since we had a lot of trouble getting some crucial materials for the mosquito traps. I just finished my third week, and we finally caught some mosquitoes! Two light traps were set out on Tuesday, left to run all night, and we went back on Wednesday to retrieve what we caught. We spent the rest of the week trying to identify each species in our catch. This was a bit of a challenge since I have never worked with mosquitoes before and the characteristics were tough to see at times. However, I think I have gotten the hang of using the dichotomous key and identifying the species.  Attached is a picture of the light trap. The mosquitoes are attracted to the light and the dry ice coming out of the blue container. Then, the fan below the light sucks the mosquitoes into the mesh catch container and keeps them contained by blowing air downwards.